Also, you say that the only way you can imagine being fearless is to be stupid. I’m afraid another possibility, and one we’re seeing at rather high levels these days, is madness. See, e.g., some of the late, great Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s last public statements, and some of what Paul Craig Roberts has written on the CounterPunch website (you can find them all with a little googling). CounterPunch is a site I highly recommend, by the way, for those who want to keep track of what we have to fear, and seek to repair. Perhaps the pre-eminent source, for me, is Noam Chomsky (quoted below).

Recently I was asked to prepare a reading for a bar mitzvah. I’m afraid I began drafting with R.D. Laing’s reflection in 1967 from “The Politics of Experience” on how society trains and highly values its normal men, who had at that time killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men (and women, and children), in the prior 50 years. I began attempting to update the figure for the following forty years, but thankfully realized that quoting Laing would have been wildly inappropriate. So I admit I somewhat surprised myself by coming up instead with the following, which I’d like to share in response to your statement:

There has been substantial progress in the unending quest for justice and freedom in recent years…. The crises we face [today] are real and imminent, [but] in each case means are available to overcome them. The first step is understanding, then [at times, individual action can be effective; at others, we need] organization and [collective] action. That is the path that has been followed in the past, bringing about a much better world and leaving a legacy that can be carried forward from a higher plane than before.…[1]

Therefore, may we have not only strength, determination, and will power, but understanding, compassion, patience, persistence, and the courage to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, [to vindicate] the rights of all who are left desolate,”[2] and to work in cooperation with our neighbors and the world community, that our world may become just and therefore peaceful and safe, and that our lives may be blessed.[3]

And let us say: Amen.

[1] Adapted from Noam Chomsky, Failed States, and “Imminent Crises: Threats and Opportunities,” Monthly Review 17, June 2007.
[2] Proverbs 31:8.
[3] Adapted from Jack Riemer, Social Action

The hardest sort of fear is fear of the future, a fear that all our “good work” can be evaporated in an instant, making action in the world futile.

I’m not religious at all, but it’s funny my mind twisted the words around in the title from “Scared” to “Sacred” – perhaps an unconscious reminder that power exists from within as much as the material world.

I think also of Russian Writer/philospher, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and his book The Brothers Karamazov, a quote I copied.

Great hope can lie in loss and failure, forcing us to give up safety and see deeper sources of power within.

Here’s the extended quote I reread at times, a conversation between a younger and older man

… “That life is heaven,” he said to me suddenly, “that I have long been thinking about.” And all at once he added, “In fact, I think of nothing else.” He looked at me and smiled. “I am more convinced of it that you are, I will tell you why later on.”

I listened to him and thought that he had something that he wanted to tell me.

“Heaven,” he went on, “lies hidden within all of us – it lies hidden in me now, and if I will it, it will be revealed to me tomorrow and for all time.”

I looked at him. He was speaking with great emotion and looking mysteriously at me, as if he were questioning me.

“And we are all responsible to all for all, apart from our own sins. You were quite right in thinking that. And it is wonderful how you could comprehend it in all its significance at once. And in truth, so soon as men understand that, the Kingdom of Heaven will be for them not a dream, but a living reality.”

“And when?” I cried out to him bitterly, “When will that come to pass? Will it ever come to pass? It is not simply a dream?”

“Then you don’t believe it.” He said, “You preach it and don’t believe it yourself. Believe me, this dream, as you call it, will come to pass without doubt. It will come, but not now, for every process has its law. It’s a spiritual, psychological process. To transform the world, to recreate it afresh, men must turn into another path psychologically. Until you have become really, in actual fact, a brother to everyone, brotherhood will not come to pass. No sort of scientific teaching, no kind of common interest, will ever teach men to share property and privileges with equal consideration for all. Everyone will think his share too small and they will be always envying, complaining and attacking one another. You ask when it will come to pass; it will come to pass, but first we have to go through a period of isolation.”

“What do you mean by isolation?” I asked him.

“Why, the isolation that prevails everywhere, above all in our age – it has not fully developed, it has not reached its limit yet. For everyone strives to keep his individuality, everyone wants to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for himself. But meanwhile all his efforts result not in attaining fullness of life but self-destruction, for instead of self-realization he ends by arriving at complete solitude. All mankind in our age is split up into units. Man keeps apart, each in his own groove; each one hold aloof, hides himself and hides what he has, from the rest. He ends by being repelled by others and repelling them. He heaps up riches by himself and thinks, ‘How strong I am now and how secure.’ And in his madness he does not understand that the more he heaps up, the more he sinks into self-destructive impotence. For he is accustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the whole; he has trained himself not to believe in the help of others, in men and in humanity, and only trembles for fear he should lose his money and the privileges that he has won for himself. Everywhere in these days men have ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort. But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another. It will be the spirit of the time and people will marvel that they sat so long in the darkness without seeing the light. And the sign of the Son of Man will be seen in the heavens. … But, until then, we must keep the banner flying. Sometimes even if he has to do it alone, and his conduct seems crazy, a man must set an example, and so draw men’s souls out of their solitude, and spur them to some act of brotherly love, that the great idea may not die.”

As usual, I agree with 90% of your offerings.

However, your “nation of farmers” is your state of denial, your form of salvation from what awaits us all – soon.

…or so it seems to me,

~Mike Porter~
aka dreemes, aloe vera, jackieblack999

One of your finer efforts. I wish more people would get their minds around the notion that you can’t wait around for enlightenment to dawn before you start acting responsible and facing facts, however unpleasant. Because actually, enlightenment tends to emerge from acting responsible and facing facts.

I just remember laying in bed, nursing my son, listening to the news on the radio and crying and crying over the babies in the refugee camp in Darfur.

I need to remember that – whenever people want to argue about whether or not global warming is caused by humans, to redirect the discussion back to the issue of overconsumption, instead.

And like Karen said, to think of what I can do right in this moment, whether it’s walking back downstairs for my metal spoon when I get up to the chili cookoff and they’re giving away plastic ones, or to buck up and get on my bike even if it’s dark and cold.